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Thursday, December 8, 2011

Food tracking in today’s time

Sometimes we wonder why the skinny jeans sit tight. We’ve been good, right? Did everything right? Ate the right thing, and worked (out) hard? How frustrating!! But some explanatory theories are plain wrong like for example “the scale is gone off the deep end…" (or ‘I must get new batteries') or “I am getting older and now have a weird metabolism that is why I am not loosing” or “Diets are a complete mystery that have not been really solved despite the multimillion dollar industry behind it”.

In reality, the laws of thermodynamics are intact: calories in versus calories out. However, it is more likely that our inner calorie calculator is off and we incorrectly assess calorie content of our daily meals. It can be because we underestimate the real weight of the portion and eyeball it (but then 3oz start to become more like 6oz), or we don’t know what is really in a dish when eating out (all that flavor enhancing butter smuggled into the veggies?), or simply let some ‘snacks’ or ‘that glass of wine’ slip our minds (and accounting). However, our trusty bodies account correctly. Getting the calorie equation right (that includes correct assessing how much we burn every day and not use the treadmill number at the gym which is likely based on a 180 pound 6 ft man) does works.

In our modern technology times, there are a new ways of being accountable: beside using a device like the BodyMedia sensor to track daily caloric expenditure automatically and accurately, Evernote has a new application for the IPhone to track food intact using the phone’s camera and the application. The data can be synch with a laptop-based application, and next time the jeans are tight again we can go back and wonder “did I really eat all these cookies at the holiday party?” That is, if you take picts of the cookies, and not of the cute date next to you….